Calling Oracle Hypocritical, Google Denies Patent Infringement

Google denied the patents were legitimate, called Oracle hypocritical for suing over open source software, and asked for the suit to be thrown out immediately.

Oracle claims that Android infringes on four Java patents it acquired when it bought Sun Microsystems earlier this year. Java software makes it possible to write software code that runs on multiple kinds of hardware via a Java interpreter. Sun had open-sourced most, but not all, parts of Java, but was considered by most other companies as unlikely to aggressively protect its patents.

Oracle, led by the brash Larry Ellison, has turned out to be a different cup of joe altogether.

The Oracle suit is just one of many patent suits brought against the Android platform, which has quickly become the fastest-growing mobile OS. Google says it is activating 200,000 Android handsets on 50 different carriers around the world, while its app market now boasts 80,000 applications, closing in on Apple. Apple filed a patent infringement suit against handset maker HTC, while Microsoft filed its own against former close partner Motorola. Both seem to be trying to slow down Android, which appeals to carriers and handset makers for its price and the freedom it gives them to customize a device with their own services, without having to negotiate with the OS maker.

In its reply (.pdf), Google told the Northern California District Court that:

The patents weren’t valid

Android didn’t infringe on the patents

The patents had been open-sourced

Oracle waited too long to bring the suit, and

Oracle has no right to sue since it’s not being damaged by Android.

Moreover, Google argues that as late as February 2009, Oracle was calling on Sun to open-source all of Java, but reversed itself after buying Sun in January 2010, making itself a hypocrite for bringing a patent infringement suit.

“Since that time, and directly contrary to Oracle Corp’s public actions and statements, as well as its own proposals as an executive member of the JCP, Oracle Corp. and Sun (now Oracle America) have ignored the open source community’s requests to fully open-source the Java platform,” Google said.

In response, Oracle says Google is damaging its company and consumers.

“In developing Android, Google chose to use Java code without obtaining a license,” said Oracle spokeswoman Deborah Hellinger in a written statement “Additionally, it modified the technology so it is not compliant with Java’s central design principle to ‘write once and run anywhere.’ Google’s infringement and fragmentation of Java code not only damages Oracle, it clearly harms consumers, developers and device manufacturers.”

As for why Oracle is defending its patents, Alexander Poltorak, the CEO of General Patent, a patent licensing and enforcement firm, says patents are awarded as a quid pro quo for disclosing an invention to the public, instead of keeping them as trade secrets. Patents then are useful only for licensing and lawsuits, even if Oracle is by definition a patent troll.

“A patent troll is someone who acquires a patent they didn’t invent and acquire for litigation only,” Poltorak said, as a prelude to dismissing the term as nonsense. “But whether you acquire or invent, it is still property and there’s no difference or morality in how you came to possess the patent.”

“Intellectual property is a bundle of rights,” Poltorak said. “It is a right to exclude others from practicing your invention. There is no use for it other than litigation.”

Google denies that it is using Java’s “virtual machine” — the intermediary software that lets developers write applications that can run on dozens of different Android devices regardless of the hardware.

Instead Google says it mostly developed its own VM and was careful to only use clearly open source parts of Java.

“Although software applications for the Android platform may be written in the Java programming language, the Dalvik bytecode is distinct and different from Java bytecode. The Dalvik VM is not a Java VM,” Google wrote.

“The core class libraries of the Dalvik VM incorporate a subset of Apache Harmony, a clean room, open source implementation of Java from the Apache Software Foundation.,” Google said. “Other than the Harmony libraries, the Android platform, including, without limitation, the Dalvik VM, was independently developed….”

Google is asking for the suit to be thrown out by the court and that it be awarded legal fees on the grounds Oracle filed the suit, despite knowing it was groundless.